According to a recent study by Current Analysis, sales of Microsoft Windows Media Center PC's have skyrocketed since July 9th: during the week ended August 20th, the study claims, Media Center PC's accounted for 43 percent of all desktop computers sold in the US retail market, based on data from a sampling of US retailers. Current Analysis attributes the rapid increase in Media Center sales largely to a decline in the platform's price: for the first time ever, its average retail price has dropped below $900. The company also credits Microsoft's promotional efforts for the platform at select retailers. Among other findings of the study: 71 percent of the Media Centers sold in the week ended August 20th did not have a TV tuner; 53 percent of the Media Centers sold that week utilized AMD's Athlon 64 processor; and 67 percent of Media Centers sold that week were equipped with a 250GB hard drive. "The desktop market is in dire need of anything that will differentiate it from laptops, which have been stealing sales over the last year," Current Analysis's senior director of research, Matt Sargent, said in a prepared statement. "Media Center, with its focus on performance-centric tasks, such as manipulating pictures, video and audio content, is one key differentiator. The continued success of the desktop form factor is reliant upon the success of Media Center--this is the reason we are seeing leading manufacturers such as HP rapidly shift their desktop offerings to Media Center." A number of video content providers are betting on the Media Center's success, including news service Reuters, which offers a multiscreen interactive TV news channel on the platform, and Akimbo, which next month will begin offering its niche VOD service on the platform.
The worldwide server market has entered a new phase defined almost entirely by artificial intelligence (AI) infrastructure economics rather than traditional enterprise refresh cycles. The latest market data shows robust growth and a structural shift in where value is created, who captures it, and which architectures are setting the pace for the next decade. IDC reports that worldwide server revenue reached a record $112.4 billion in the third quarter of 2025, representing a striking 61 percent year-over-year increase compared to the same quarter in 2024. For context, this means the market is adding tens of billions of dollars in incremental quarterly spend, driven overwhelmingly by AI and accelerated computing requirements. IT Server Market Development Over the first three quarters of 2025, server revenue has already reached $314.2 billion, meaning the market has nearly doubled in size compared to 2024, underscoring how AI buildouts have compressed several years of exp...